Product description

Even today, as trendy diets and a weight-loss frenzy sweep the nation, two-thirds of adults are still obese and children are being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, typically an "adult" disease, at an alarming rate. If we're obsessed with being thin more so than ever before, why are Americans stricken with heart disease as much as we were 30 years ago? In The China Study, Dr. T. Colin Campbell details the connection between nutrition and heart disease, diabetes, and cancer. The report also examines the source of nutritional confusion produced by powerful lobbies, government entities, and opportunistic scientists. The New York Times has recognized the study as the "Grand Prix of epidemiology" and the "most comprehensive large study ever undertaken of the relationship between diet and the risk of developing disease." The China Study is not a diet book. Dr. Campbell cuts through the haze of misinformation and delivers an insightful message to anyone living with cancer, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and those concerned with the effects of aging. [This book is also available in Spanish, El Estudio de China.]

Author information

For more than 40 years, T. Colin Campbell, PhD, has been at the forefront of nutrition research. His legacy, the China Study, is the most comprehensive study of health and nutrition ever conducted. Dr. Campbell is the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University. He has received more than 70 grant years of peer-reviewed research funding and authored more than 300 research papers. The China Study was the culmination of a 20-year partnership of Cornell University, Oxford University and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine. A 1999 graduate of Cornell University and recipient of a medical degree in 2010, Thomas M. Campbell II, MD, is a writer, actor and five-time marathon runner.

Customer reviews

A life-changing book - liberating. I've read so much about diet/nutrition - not much of what I read held much sway with me. Much of it - promoting fat and meat, or eating according to blood group and so on - I felt was instinctively incorrect and, then, I would discover that there was no peer-reviewed, reliable science behind it. However, when I read this book, I knew I'd finally found someone I could trust to tell me the truth about nutrition because he has uncovered it. I was fortunate to have Born to Run recommended to me and from there, I'm very glad that I have an investigative mind - because that's how I discovered The China Study - one read had led to another. Then, I went on to learn about Dr Caldwell Esselstyn, Dr Neal Barnard, Dr Dean Ornish and John Robbins (The Food Revolution). Every month, I hear of at leas one of the people I know, or who they know, who have had a heart attack, or heart bypass surgery, or breast removal, prostate cancer or multiple sclerosis, or diabetes. It seems I don't even need the statistics to tell me that we have an epidemic everywhere we eat a Western diet.

I have read this book. It is one of the worst cases of abuse of scientific method I've come across in a long while. Conclusions do not match the data included. It is written to justify a vegan diet and does that job poorly. There are easily seen through outright lies.

Vegans will of course laud it, but anyone used to interpreting data will be annoyed if they waste their good money on it. It has the quality of an internet chain letter.

This is THE most important book on nutrition I have ever read. After being vegetarian for 23 years I read this book and became vegan straight away. My husband did also, and he wasn't even vegetarian. Doctors always urged him to eat plenty of red meat as his blood iron was so low he had to have infusions.

This man writes complete sense. In 2 1/2 years of eating vegan the haemoglobin in my blood, always struggling around the 110 dl mark, is now over 140dl, never been that high in my life and I am 68. My husband had his bloods done the other day and was told everything was absolutely perfect, with no supplements or infusions for many years.

Because of cultural conditioning I was expecting the worst but now I am absolutely confident that eating zero animal products is the way to go. I have bought several copies of this book to pass on the members of the family. One daughter is 3/4 the way there, the other still doesn't want to know, even though her iron and vitamin D are critically low. She has bought into the expensive vitamin supplement industry while her children eat rubbish and thinks she is doing the right thing nutritionally.

Initially I found cheese substitutes hard as they basically taste awful, now I just avoid all fake foods. Life is much simpler and I feel free as I now know what is the probable truth. Dr Campbell's book is all about probabilities. We should know what these probabilities are then if we make a decision to poison ourselves at least we are not ignorant about it.

Cows' milk products are in so many of our foods, snuck in as lactose and casein, etc. I have become a very proficient small print reader on labels. Even the wider medical community are beginning to realise that the increase in diabetes 1, and 2, in children cannot just be blamed on proximity to the poles or extra cleanliness.

The political aspects of the food industry were particularly illuminating. As Dr Campbell has been involved at a very high level in so much of it, the conclusions are frightening.

This book is very clearly written which is amazing considering what a complex subject it is.

I have been mostly vegetarian for the last 35 years but have always faltered at going fully vegan - in particular with giving up cheese - after reading this book the evidence is very compelling for making the complete switch to a plant-based diet. Not only for my own health but for the health of the planet.

This is the most convincing book I have ever read about the connection between health and nutrition.
After reading it I have completely eliminated animal based products from my diet.
EVERYBODY should have I chance to know what's written in this book.

Review quote

"[These] findings from the most comprehensive large study ever undertaken of the relationship between diet and the risk of developing disease are challenging much of American dietary dogma." --The New York Times "Reflects the profound changes that industrialization is bringing to diet and disease patterns in China, statistics that have had an impact on reevaluating dietary policy in the United States and worldwide." --Washington Post "Everyone in the field of nutrition science stands on the shoulders of Dr. Campbell, who is one of the giants in the field. This is one of the most important books about nutrition ever written--reading it may save your life." --Dean Ornish, MD, Founder & President, Preventative Medicine Research Institute; Clinical Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco; Author, Dr. Dean Ornish's Program for Reversing Heart Disease and Love & Survival "Colin Campbell's The China Study is an important book, and a highly readable one. With his son, Tom, Colin studies the relationship between diet and disease, and his conclusions are startling. The China Study is a story that needs to be heard." --Robert C. Richardson, PhD, Nobel Prize Winner; Professor of Physics and Vice Provost of Research, Cornell University "The China Study gives critical, life-saving nutritional information ... Dr. Campbell's expose of the research and medical establishment makes this book a fascinating read and one that could change the future for all of us." --Joel Fuhrman, MD, Author, Eat to Live